NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.–The U.S. Air Force plans to make Skyborg–one of the service’s original Vanguard research and development efforts–a program of record in fiscal 2024, and for the Kratos [KTOS] XQ-58A Valkyrie, that will likely mean the start of equipping and testing the drone with systems for specific missions to dovetail with the service’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) effort.
“Today, when we produce an XQ-58, it rolls off the line as a ‘green’ aircraft,” Steve Fendley, the president of Kratos’ unmanned systems division, said in an interview this week at the Air and Space Forces Association’s air, space, and cyber conference. “It can go fly. It can fly autonomously. It can fly way points. It can make decisions. It does not include a baseline mission set because those are tailored per customer per mission. To me, what’s different is that.”
“As a program of record, every one that comes off the line will have a particular mission integrated as part of the production,” but the missions and the specific Air Force commands requesting them are “TBD,” he said. The Air Force has said that initial CCAs will focus on air-to-air. Future ones, however, could specialize in non-kinetic or kinetic suppression of enemy air defenses or air-to-ground missions, for example.
While the Air Force has requested $522 million in fiscal 2024 for CCA, $390 million of which is part of the Next Generation Air Dominance program, much of the development of CCA is under wraps as classified.
The Air Force fiscal 2024 budget request mentions CCA in other service research and development efforts. For example, the Air Force requests nearly $28 million in advanced technology/development in fiscal 2024 for advanced technology and sensors (ATS).
The latter program “coordinates the development of platform-agile advanced technologies (sensors, low-cost, low-SWAP [size, weight, and power] attritable ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] sensors, data links, targeting support, and quick reaction capabilities) in support of High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) platforms, manned and unmanned airborne reconnaissance platforms, Autonomous Collaborative Platforms, and Collaborative Combat Aircraft,” the Air Force budget said. “Its objectives are to develop, demonstrate, and rapidly transition advanced, interoperable, multi-platform solutions to reduce the find, fix, target, and track kill chain timeline.”
“The ATS program also increases interoperability by developing common standards and interfaces,” the Air Force said. “The funds in this program are distributed in priority order for the goal of building a comprehensive Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) capability for the USAF. On an annual basis, developmental technologies are reviewed against warfighter capabilities and requirements based on strategic roadmaps and on the results of the Airborne Sensors for ISR Analysis of Alternatives, as prefaced in the Challenging Targets Initial Capabilities Document. Efforts advancing the technological maturity of promising sensors and processing capabilities are reviewed and prioritized into a recommended list for senior executive direction to implement in the coming year. The program office has the ability to rapidly initiate an Imaging & Targeting Support (I&TS) project in order to expedite development and acquisition of urgently needed capabilities for the warfighter.”
In addition, the Next Generation Sensor segment of ATS is to mature mature “platform agile, low-SWAP attritable ISR sensors developed under Imaging and Targeting Support culminating in a fieldable prototype demonstration using an AgilePod” to integrate with manned and unmanned platforms, including CCA, according to the Air Force’s fiscal 2024 budget.
In 2020, the Air Force Research Laboratory began testing the Valkyrie as part of the Skyborg Vanguard program.
While Kratos annually builds 150 drones–mostly targets but also some UAVs like the Valkyrie,
the UTAP-22 Mako, and the Tactical Firejet— the company, if needed to meet DoD surge demands, could double or triple that production with existing plants via production efficiencies, 3D printing, the use of machines and machine methods, and outsourcing the production of parts, Fendley said in March (Defense Daily, March 1).
Fendley said at the time that there is idle capacity at Kratos.
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology company Shield AI said in June that it had teamed with Kratos to integrate autonomous piloting technology into the XQ-58A (Defense Daily, June 15).
Shield AI said in June that it has developed an AI pilot called Hivemind to operate autonomously without GPS and communications. The company said that the software has already flown on an F-16 fighter, Shield AI’s Group 3 V-BAT unmanned aircraft system (UAS) that takes off and lands vertically but flies like a fixed-wing aircraft, and a small quadcopter UAS.
Brandon Tseng, Shield AI’s president and co-founder, has said that drones unable to operate without GPS and communications will be of little use against high-tech adversaries, and he said that Ukraine is losing thousands of drones monthly due to Russian jamming.
“If an uncrewed aircraft is unable to operate without GPS and without communications, it will be near useless in future conflicts,” Tseng said in a statement. “AI pilots enable teams of aircraft to intelligently execute missions without GPS and communications. When you take an incredible, affordable uncrewed jet aircraft like the XQ-58 and pair it up with our AI pilot, you create a game changing strategic deterrent.”
Last summer, a Kratos analysis “for a particular customer” indicated that Kratos could build thousands of drones per year, “and we have a plan in place, whenever it’s time to turn that on,” Fendley said in March.
On Dec. 30 last year, the U.S. Navy awarded Kratos a $15.5 million contract for two Valkyries under the Affordable Autonomous Cooperative Killers program under which the U.S. Marine Corps could use the “killers” as “motherships” for small drones and to bolster the service’s strikes, electronic warfare, and intelligence gathering (Defense Daily, Jan. 5).
In March, Air Force Maj. Gen. R. Scott Jobe, Air Combat Command’s director of plans, programs, and requirements, said that low-cost CCAs “doesn’t mean” attritable.
“That’s been a common misconception, he said. “We’re gonna reuse these air vehicles.”
Fendley said this week that an important factor will be building a CCA that an adversary is unable to defeat—for example, by shooting it down or jamming it—with a system that costs less than the CCA.
Fendley cited Kratos’ Tactical Firejet as an example of a survivable, affordable drone. The Tactical Firejet, “which is missionized at sub $500K,” is a “.7 Mach airplane with 9 to 12 G capability and because of that and some inherent signature characteristics…it’s hard to defeat that with something that costs less, and if you recognize that if you’ve had a successful mission and then you lose something in the expendables class, that’s okay.”
Much of the CCA work has been in the virtual environment, as the U.S. has had just three autonomous drones that it could use for CCA flight testing–one X-62A Variable Stability In-Flight Simulator Test Aircraft (VISTA) and two XQ-58A Valkyries.
Defense analysts have said that the NGAD family of systems could contain a mix of stealth systems, mid-cost systems in the $5 million to $25 million range, and high numbers of low-cost systems priced below $5 million.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has warned against the Air Force “gold plating” CCA requirements–an everything and anything list “which has gotten us in trouble in the past” on other programs.